1
Vocabulary - where does it come from?

The Algilez vocabulary is compiled
from a number of different sources. These include:

Roget's Thesaurus,
headwords and keywords

These cover all major word meanings in the English language (although there
may be some minor sub-classifications which are not covered)

Voice of America Wordlist

Wordlist used in Voice of America
radio broadcasts. This list contains a useful number of words
relating to politics and present day life.

Longman Defining
Vocabulary

The wordlist used by the Longman
English Dictionary to define its meanings. This list should
therefore include most of the commonly used and understood English
words.

Assessment and
Qualifications Alliance (AQA) French and German GCSE wordlists in
the UK

The wordlist used by the AQA board
for the French and German GCSE exams. This gives the French &
German words or phrases that a student would be expected to know in
order to take the AQA French or German GCSE exams. This is
normally taken by British school children aged 16 after about 5
years of learning. A pass at A, B or C level is equivalent to Common
European Framework (CEF) level B1. CEF levels vary from
A1 (beginner), A2, B1, B2 (British 'A' Level exam), C1 (University level) and
C2 (professional level).

A publication by the
International Maritime Organisation (a UN body) giving standard
English language phrases for maritime use. This was used as an
example of specialised professional text, both to check the
translation difficulties and to see what percentage of new root and
compound words would be required.
Standard Marine Communication Phrases

Additional Sources

These include common household items, animals (domestic, farm and
zoo), children's games and toys, colours and shapes etc2

2
Statistics

2.1
Algilez Vocabulary

The
Algilez vocabulary continues to be developed. In July 2006 there were 4,600 entries, by December
2013 this had increased to 8,120. This was the result of development of the Algilez
documentation which includes the Grammar, Phrase Book, the English-Algilez Translation Guide,
additional words from the AQA Examination Board, the GCSE Lesson Book and the Longman Photo Dictionary.
Please remember that the vocabulary still really only contains general ‘day to day’ words
but is being added to almost every day. The rate of
addition now appears to be decreasing (April 2017, 8240 words)
as most of the words necessary for day to day use seem to have
been included.

There are estimated to be about
a million words in the English language, so we still have some
way to go yet (although most English speakers apparently only use about 2,000 words for most day to
day communication).

The Algilez vocabulary does not contain all the possible
grammatical combinations of tenses or adjectival affixes that
are possible in Algilez, just a few examples (usually of the
verb infinitive and adjective) are provided. The Algilez Spell Checker contains every Algilez word created so far. It provides a more comprehensive list of words
than the vocabulary, including many of the grammatical variations, e.g. with verbal, tense and adjectival
affixes included. The present number of words in the
Spellchecker is over 21,000.

The Algilez Dictionary (English-Algilez
and Algilez-English) is based on the vocabulary, but ordered
alphabetically for ease of use. The Vocabulary is ordered
by Roget number (see Section 4 below), which groups words by
meaning instead of alphabetically.

The vocabulary contained 1882 root words used
as of April 2017, excluding plants, animals and proper names.
Algilez does not yet contain a full set of individual words for plants, animals and
technical items that would be encountered in a natural language
(which would number many hundreds of thousands). However, the core Algilez
vocabulary appears to be fairly robust for day to day use –
almost anything you can say in English you can say in Algilez!

Note that 'compound words' as defined
below are new words with a new semantic meaning.
Grammatical variations derived from any existing root or compound word
(e.g. conjugated tenses, adjectives & adverbs etc) are sometimes included in the Vocabulary list,
in order to make finding the words
easier. However since there are no irregular words in
Algilez, all grammatical variations follow set patterns (e.g.
for tenses, verbs, professions, adverbs and adjectives etc) and are very easy to apply

.

2.2Statistics as of 16 February 2019 (note that these
are changing regularly)

This demonstrates that over a fairly large
amount of standard text, Algilez contains about
17% fewer words and 31% fewer characters. On
average, Algilez words are shorter than English
words (3.6 characters compared with 4.3
characters). All of this contributes to
help reduce the burden of learning.

3
Vocabulary required for standard exams

3.1
What do you need to know?

The AQA exam board word list provides a
useful benchmark for estimating the words that need to be
learned for Common European Framework (CEF) level B1 (equivalent
to GCSE level, Grades A-C in the UK). I have combined the
English language translations of the recommended
wordlists for the French and German GCSE exams (marked with 'F'
& 'G' in
the Algilez word list) which total 1981 words for French and
2099 words for German.

Most words are identical for both exams but a
few hundred are specific to either just the French or German exams. Also,
many words are grammatical variations of the same root word.
The list contains many words appropriate to normal day to day
life for European teenagers and is therefore a reasonable list
for an intermediate standard of conversation and reading.

The AQA French GCSE list includes
907 Algilez
root words and German 949 Algilez root words, including
those for plants, food and proper names).
The Algilez
GCSE Revision Book contains 1520 root words which would need to be
learnt out of 2,439 total root words. Although this
sounds a lot, most of the vocabulary is devolved from English
and should be fairly easy and quick to learn.

Hence, as well as the grammar
rules, knowledge of approximately 62% of the Algilez root words
(and the compound words derived from them) would therefore need
to be learnt to achieve a CEF level B1 (UK GCSE level).
The vocabulary numbers include words from both the Beginners
Course as well as the GCSE book, which helps spread the workload
of learning.

4 How to
use the vocabulary

The Algilez vocabulary format is
based on the Roget Thesaurus numbering system (see Roget's Thesaurus below).

Note: Due to regular
updates of the vocabulary, the additional letters after the
Roget numbers in the sections below may have changed.

Roget

English

Algilez

Root

Additional Algilez

English

Roget number

plus additional sub-classification letters

Roget headword or keyword (this gives the basic meaning of the
word). Plus additional common words which express the same meaning.

Algilez

word

Root Word (r)

animal (a),

plant (p)

or Proper Name (n)

Additional grammatical versions of the Algilez word. Normally
the verb and adjective

5 Roget's
Thesaurus

5.1 Ogden's Basic English

My initial starting point for a
simple wordlist
in Algilez was Ogden's 'Basic English'. This
appeared to be a well thought out and compact list of
850 common English words. The theory being that you can say
anything that you need to say just using those words.
Unfortunately
it soon became clear that 'Basic English'
was fatally flawed due to allowing multiple meanings
of words, since this is the only way the list can be kept down to 850.
Multiple meanings are confusing in any language and English suffers
particularly badly from this problem. Any artificial language must
be designed to avoid this.

5.2 Roget's 1000 categories of
meaning

The reference book which I used to
establish the various meaning of the words used in Basic English was
Roget's Thesaurus. In using the book in a detailed and methodical
way (rather than just looking for synonyms for essay writing or
crosswords), I began to realise the excellent work which lay behind it.
In compiling his Thesaurus, Peter Roget had first categorised the whole of
the English Language. This was a lifetime's work and the final
product is not just a detailed list of English synonyms, but, most
importantly, a comprehensive analysis of the English language into a
logical list of just under 1000 categories of meaning.
Although first published in 1852, it has been regularly revised and
updated and still remains in daily use.

5.3 Other languages

Every single word in the English language can be placed in one of the Roget
categories. Since the categories are based on meaning, then any
other language can be similarly categorised using the same 1000
headings. Roget, who was a doctor and later became
Secretary of the Royal Society, was certainly familiar with, possibly even
fluent in French, German and Latin and did hope that a common world
language might result from his work. In fact, shortly after
Roget's Thesaurus was first published, versions also appeared in French
and German. It would be interesting to know if they have been
published in any other languages. Since crossword puzzles cannot
be a purely English language hobby, then I'm sure there must be more
versions around somewhere!

5.4 Different types of Thesaurus

Modern versions of Roget’s Thesaurus
sometimes use a different numbering system (e.g. starting with
'001: Birth' instead of '001: Existence'). Other versions
may not use numbers at all but simply be a list of synonyms in
alphabetical order.

It is the classification system of
Roget’s original Thesaurus, as much as the grouping of synonyms
that makes Roget’s work so useful in language analysis.
It is a great complement to Roget's intellectual ability and
language skill that most of his categories are still valid today
after more than 150 years.

The construction of a new logical vocabulary would be impossible
without first deciding what meanings it was necessary to express
and what associated words stem from those meanings. The
classification process was a lifetime’s work in itself.
Fortunately we are able to use the excellent work of Roget to
continue with the construction of a new language, today.
(This is not to say that some of his placing
of words,
and some of
the categories themselves,
are not questionable. Roget himself recognised the
limitations of his work and the deficiencies and imperfections
that it might contain.)

For anyone interested, the Roget version that I am using is the
1998 Edition published by Penguin/Longman Group, which uses the
original Roget numbering system with 990 categories (although
with modern updates to the content). I also have a 1962
Edition of a version published by Thomas Crowell Company of USA.
This still follows the Roget principles but contains additional
categories, totalling 1040.

I
consider this version better, due to the improved list of
categories but it appears to be out of print and less readily
available.

The Historical Thesaurus of English, recently published by
Glasgow University (after 45 years of work!) uses an altogether
different numbering system to Roget. Its purpose is really
to trace the historical evolution of words and hence is not
ideal for developing a new language. However it is still
possible to compare similar meanings from one book to another,
relatively easily.

Hence, despite my
reservations about some of the Roget categories, I have decided to retain the Roget
classification system for the time being, since it is better
suited to language development work. Also, most
importantly, Roget's Thesaurus is still published and is readily
available in its original form (unlike the later Thomas Crowell
version). Should a more suitable classification system
appear, the eventual transfer of the
Algilez vocabulary to it, would probably only be a few days work

.

5.5 Language by numbers - a new way
of looking at language

A very interesting implication for language
development has become apparent from working with the Roget
Classification system. Since every word in Algilez has (or
will eventually have) a unique classification number, then it
would be possible to write sentences in Algilez using just the
classification numbers alone. This is made much easier by
the regular syntax of Algilez.

There are a number of implications for this.
Firstly, the actual words used could be changed very easily.
This has already proved very useful in this development stage of
the language when
words have sometimes needed to be changed to something more
suitable. For translation purposes, the substitution of
foreign language words might also be possible, although syntax
(word order) differences would still require further work to make a good
translation.

The second implication is that machine
reading of Algilez should be considerably easier, since any
sentence could theoretically be reduced to the numerical
components from the classified vocabulary list e.g.

English

He

went

with

his
son

to

the park

Algilez

il

goz

vek

cuil ila

u

pãk

Algilez Roget numbers

371cf

265c+125a

089a

011dea 371cf+564b

289b

837fa

Whether this will eventually prove to be
worthwhile remains to be seen, but I suspect there is
considerable potential for further development.

I should point out that although the Algilez
system (generally) uses the Roget numbers, the additional
letters are purely arbitrary and

created by me to
help further sub-classify the words.

5.6 Issues with Roget's Thesaurus

Occasionally I have come across classification
examples that I find questionable. Generally I have
accepted Roget's expertise in the matter and gone along with his
classification. However there are a few cases where I
cannot agree and have put words into a different classification
group. Whether these classifications were down to
Roget or to later editors I cannot say. Similarly, I
wonder if these arguable classifications had been noticed and
debated previously? I list below a couple of examples of
changes made. In any case it certainly does not detract from the
magnificent achievement of the creation of the thesaurus in the
first place.

English

Algilez

Original Number

Revised Number

Reason for change

Route, road etc

rut
etc

624

305

Roget appears to have mixed the meanings of 'way'
which in 624 is used to mean 'method/how' and that of
305 where 'way' is used as a passage/physical route.
I have therefore moved all words relating to routes,
roads, paths etc to 305

6 Algilez
classification example

6.1 Lateness

The word lists used to build the
Algilez vocabulary contained three similar words: delay, defer
and postpone. All three words come under the same category
of Roget 136, for which the Headword is 'Lateness'.
Lateness is a general term and is sub-divided into 'Lateness' and
'Delay', which I have given the numbers Roget 136a (Lateness) and
Roget 136b (delay). 'Delay', 'defer' and 'postpone' all come
under sub-section 136b (delay).

6.2 Delay,
defer and postpone

In other words 'delay, defer
and postpone' are all considered by Roget to have a similar
enough meaning to be grouped under the same category and to be a form of
'delay'. As an initial assumption, we could say that all three
words have the same meaning.

Note that this does not
imply that they would always be interchangeable whenever they
were used in English. It may be that under different
circumstances either 'delay' or 'defer' or 'postpone' might be
used, due to 'custom and practice' of normal English usage.
However, the point is, we are starting by saying that
the semantic meaning of the three words is identical and for
that reason any one of them could be used and the Algilez
word that represents that meaning (del)
would apply to any one of the three.

(Note that when I compare
'a delay' I am comparing it with other nouns - 'a deferral' or 'a
postponement', similarly we are comparing 'to delay' with
other verbs -
'to defer' or 'to postpone'. It is the
semantic meaning that we are looking at here, not the
grammatical usage).

6.3 Differences between
Defer/Postpone and Delay

However in looking at the words
more closely, we may consider, for example, that although 'defer'
and 'postpone' have identical semantic meaning, that meaning is
slightly different to that of 'delay'. In such a case we
need to modify the Roget numbering slightly e.g.

Roget Number

English

Algilez

136ba

delay

del

136bb

defer, postpone

delgã

In this case we have chosen to
define 'defer' & 'postpone' as a delay
to starting something and therefore formed the compound word 'delgã' from the roots 'del' (delay) and 'gã'
(begin). An alternative may have been to say that 'defer' &
'postpone' might be defined by 'del' (delay)
and 'hãp' (happening/event) , hence making 'delhãp'.

This then enables others to quickly
compare the semantic meaning of any words with both English and other
languages, both natural and artificial.7

7
Vocabulary

7.1Algilez classification
system

As mentioned above, Algilez is classified
into approximately 1000 main classes of meaning, taken from the Roget Thesaurus.
Each main heading of meaning is numbered.
Sub headings and individual words are shown by additional letters. The additional letters are
arbitrary, to help further sub-classify the words
e.g.:-

011c

family

fam

r

011ca

mother

pãrel

011caa

mum (mother)

mã

r

011cab

grandmother

pãrpãrel

011cb

father

pãril

011cba

dad

pã

r

011cbb

grandfather

pãrpãril

011cc

child

cu

r2

011cca

son

cuil

011ccb

daughter

cuel

011ce

sibling

sib

r

011cea

brother

sibil

011ceb

sister

sibel

011d

race, people

peg

r

011da

tribe

fampeg

7.2
Root Words

A Root Word is a Algilez
word that is in its most basic simple form. It is generally (but not
always) a noun and can have tense and verbal affixes etc added. An
example of a root noun is 'bel', meaning
beauty (an abstract noun).To
this root we add a verbal suffix to create the verb 'beliz',
meaning 'to beautify'.We can
also add an adjective suffix 'a' to make 'bela'
e.g. 'peel bela' (a beautiful woman).The same affix 'a'
can also make an adverb e.g. 'patoz bela'
(beautifully painted).Note
that a 'qualifying' word following a noun will always be an adjective and
one following a verb will always be an adverb.

A number of frequently
used words consist of single letter roots e.g.:

journey,
travel, move place

g

hear

h

listen

l

see

s

However the above roots are never used alone, they will always have an
additional letter or letters to make them into a noun, adjective, verb or
adverb e.g.:

to
travel

giz

I went yesterday

me goz ozde

a journey

go

Come here!

guz he

7.3
Algilez Vocabulary, Algilez Dictionary and Algilez spellchecker

The Algilez Vocabulary
has a separate web page and based on MS
Excel. It consists of a Algilez word list categorised by
Roget reference number.The wordlist can be copied from the web
page onto any spread sheet and then re-sorted into alphabetical order of
English or Algilez words as required.

The
Algilez Dictionary
is simply the vocabulary put
into English-Algilez and Algilez-English alphabetical word order. Note
that the vocabulary is always kept up to date but the dictionary
might lag a few weeks behind. Due to the limitations of alphabetical word ordering in MS Word,
I have had to put Algilez words beginning with
'ã' and 'ø' at the beginning of the list.

The
Algilez Spellchecker
contains all of
the Algilez words created (including many tense and other grammatical
variations).8

8 Why use a
classification system?

8.1 Starting with a word list

The starting point for a new
vocabulary is going to be one's own language. In my case, English.
The initial need is for a basic wordlist/vocabulary of the more commonly
used words, which can then be expanded to include the remainder of the
language. Given the tens of thousands of regularly used words
(including the variations of tense etc) and the hundreds of thousands of
lesser used words (including specific animal, plant and technical
terms), the difficulty is in knowing even where to begin.

One cannot just pick up an English dictionary and start translating from
the beginning!

8.2 The need
for classification

A second difficulty is that basic
word lists (i.e. dictionaries), no matter how common the words, do nothing to help with the
classification of the vocabulary which is essential for a new language.
Without classification and the sensible ordering of words of similar
meanings or those derived from the same roots, then, no matter how much
better the grammar is, the new language itself is going to be little
better than any natural language with all of its inconsistencies and
difficulties for the learner.

8.3 Previous approaches to
choosing vocabularies

Previous artificial languages have
generally succeeded in providing a simplified grammar but have generally
still tried to use lengthy and sometimes illogical European language
words as the basis for their vocabulary. They often use just an
alphabetical word list with little or no attempt at a classification of
word meanings. This may have eased word recognition by European
language speakers but would be meaningless to native speakers of
Chinese, Hindi, Arabic etc.

8.4 The Algilez classification
method

Perhaps the simplest way to
demonstrate the advantages of a classified list is to look again at the
words relating to family

011a

consanguinity, kinship

ken

011cb

father

pãril

011b

kinsman

kenpe

011cba

dad

pã

011ba

uncle/aunt

onk

011cbb

grandfather

pãrpãril

011bb

uncle

onkil

011cc

child

cu

011bc

aunt

onkel

011cca

son

cuil

011bd

cousin

kos

011ccb

daughter

cuel

011c

family

fam

011ce

sibling

sib

011ca

mother

pãrel

011cea

brother

sibil

011caa

mum (mother)

mã

011ceb

sister

sibel

011cab

grandmother

pãrpãrel

011d

race, people

peg

011da

tribe

fampeg

English words such as son,
daughter, brother & sister have no common roots to denote male or female
or to denote child. Seeing the words together, in the same Algilez
classification group above, makes it much easier to see which words
ought to use a common root. The Algilez words follow a logical
pattern, making understanding and learning much easier and quicker.

Algilez uses many words of English
origin and I have chosen to use new root words if the word is a)
frequently used and b) would otherwise require a long compound word of
three or more root words.9

9 Choice of
root words

Root words are generally based
upon the abstract noun. In some cases there are a large number of
choices, any of which would work and none of them obviously right or
wrong. In these circumstances the tangible noun is often the one
chosen due to being the more common word. An example is friend 'fren'.

Grammatical use

English

Algilez

Root Noun

friend

fren

ex - quality

friendliness

frenex

øk - result/outcome

friendship

frenøk

iz - verb

to befriend

freniz

a - adjective

friendly

frena

a - adverb

friendlily

frena

However, we could have used
'friendliness' as the main root word and modified the other meanings
accordingly e.g.

Root Noun

friendliness

fren

tangible noun

friend

frenpe

øk - result/outcome

friendship

frenøk

Alternatively we could have taken
'friendship' as the main root word :

Root Noun

friendship

fren

tangible noun

friend

frenpe

ex - quality

friendliness

frenex

In most cases the root chosen, in
order to maintain the shorter word (without affixes), has been that which
is most commonly used. In this case I have judged that 'friend' is
likely to be a more commonly used word than 'friendship' or 'friendliness'
and therefore defined friend as 'fren'
instead of 'frenpe'. (In fact
fren and
frenpe have slightly different meanings anyway but it illustrates
the point). See below for information about compound words.10

10 Creating
a compound word

Compound words are comprised of two or more root
words. In the section above are examples based on the root word 'Fren'
(friend). In these examples, we have used 'ex'
and 'øk', which are two commonly used
modifiers.

Grammatical use

English

Algilez

Root Noun

friend

fren

ex - quality

friendliness

frenex

øk - result/outcome

friendship

frenøk

However, not all word
creation is quite so obvious. Let us take the example of the word
'Passport'. This is a two-part English word, in common use and well
understood. However the word itself was probably created several
hundred years ago and would have been used to describe a letter of
permission allowing an English traveller to cross by sea into France.
Nowadays the two parts of the word do not accurately describe the function
of a passport and it would be confusing to just apply a literal
translation from English to Algilez i.e. pass-port =
pãs-goas.

We really need to think about what exactly
the function of the document is and then find the best words to
describe it.A dictionary definition
gives 'passport:- official document for use by a person
travelling abroad.' E.g.
a passport is a travel document, a means of identification, a
permit to enter countries etc. However, we do not want to
produce an unnecessarily complicated, multi-syllable word.
Some of the choices available are words such as:-

059b

foreign country

bosnax

265d

journey

go

494b

authenticity, genuineness

truøk

547b

identification, naming, point out

den

548a

document, record, documentation

rek

733a

authority

fur

756a

let, permission, allowing, allow, may

le

756c

permit, licence

lepap

Some of the above words are already two-part compound
words. In the end, the choice was made to use 'goden'
which combined the meaning of 'Journey' and 'Identity' and seemed most
appropriate to the present use of the word 'Passport'.11